Page Description

The following page is
a three column layout with a header that contains a quicklinks jump
menu and the search CSUN function. Page sections are identified with
headers. The footer contains update, contact and emergency information.

FACULTY PAGEDEPARTMENT OF MODERN AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

Course List

Drake Langford, Ph.D.Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures

Drake Langford, a San Fernando Valley native, teaches on Japan and Asia in the College of Humanities at CSU Northridge where he is an assistant professor in the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures department. He has a B.A. in Asian Studies and East Asian Languages (Japanese) from UC Berkeley, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese literature) from Yale University.

Before joining the Northridge faculty, Prof. Langford held teaching positions at the University of Colorado at Boulder, San Jose State University, and Yale University. In Japan, he is fortunate to have spent a year as an undergraduate at Doshisha University in Kyoto, a year of intensive language study at the Inter-University Center in Yokohama, and a combined number of years as a graduate research fellow at Waseda University and the National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku). He has also worked as a freelance translator and editor.

Prof. Langford's research to date has focused primarily on the cultural performance and representation of katakiuchi, an idealized form of revenge-killing, during Japan's Edo Period (1603-1868). Beyond the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation (early stories of the Ishii brothers’ 1701 vendetta), his research interests include the history of katakiuchi as an imagined samurai warrior legacy, historical and fictitious narratives of Edo-period revenge attributed to women and commoners, and early modern Japanese demand for stories of revenge. He is broadly interested in the theatrics of social forms, genre history, the rhetorical dimension of literary production, and the propagation of cultural narratives.

Prof. Langford lives with his wife and two daughters. Outside the office, he enjoys skiing, golf, karaoke, reading in bed, TV, dinner parties, camping, and long aimless walks.